Aung San Suu Kyi’s National League for Democracy (NLD) today takes centre stage to govern Myanmar for the first time, after nearly five decades of military dictatorship and five years of army-backed government.
In the wake of historic elections in November, expectations are high for the newly-elected parliament.
Voters gave the NLD an overwhelming majority, hoping that the woman who spent several years under house arrest can bring about overdue reforms.
One of the party’s central campaign promises was to reform the constitution to curtail the power of the military.
NLD is also committed to implement a federal system. And it knows that without reducing the military’s influence by reforming the constitution, a federal system cannot be implemented.
Achieving such objectives will not be easy.
The military is constitutionally guaranteed 25% of seats in parliament - making it more difficult to achieve a majority of votes needed to make changes to the constitution.
The democratic forces and military seem to have reached a point of intersection, as pointed out by a member of NLD’s central committee.
Suu Kyi has been guarded - perhaps recalling the last time the NLD won a landslide victory in 1990, when the military annulled the results and remained in power.
She stayed silent when the lame-duck parliament approved laws granting immunity to outgoing leaders, despite calls from rights groups to oppose the move.
Suu Kyi has also reached across the aisle in several high-profile meetings with military leadership.
But while the NLD navigates the winding road of dealing with the military, others worry that they are ridding one kind of dictatorship for another kind.
Suu Kyi, who is constitutionally barred from the presidency because of her foreign-born sons, has vowed to select the next president herself, and then “rule above him”.
Many observers also worry that Suu Kyi could continue institutional policies that have resulted in ethnic tensions and violence.
“We are not optimistic that elections will lessen the plight for the Rohingya,” says Matthew Smith, executive director of human rights group Fortify Rights.
The Rohingya are an ethnic Muslim community disenfranchised and segregated by the central government, a stateless minority.
The army-backed Union Solidarity and Development Party, which ruled the country since 2010, has refused to budge on the issue and has tightened access to the Rohingya community.
“The NLD have stayed silent on the issue when there is no real pragmatic reason to be silent. It reflects poorly on their leaders,” Smith says.
For an electorate that has waited for decades for democratic rule, change can’t come soon enough.
But it will be up to Suu Kyi to decide how quickly she can implement reform, both in the constitution and on humanitarian grounds, without raising the ire of the military.
